•NRLF 


10: 


IN  MEMORY  OP  B.  L.  T. 


A  LINE  0*  TYPE  OR  TWO 

Hew   to   the  Line,  let  the 
quips  fall  where  they  may. 


The   East  Window. 

When  I  am  bidden  to  the  journey  through  the 
Narrow  Vale,  I  hope  the  message  will  come,  not 
in  the  summer,  but  in  the  spring,  the  season  of 
birth  in  death.  The  idea  of  Resurrection  was  man's 
greatest  inspiration  —  a  divine  inspiration,  if  you 
wish.  The  idea  has  never  lost  its  freshness,  though 
the  phrases  we  use  to  describe  it  are  worn  to 
threads.  As  we  stt  in  the  darkened  room,  and  the 
preacher  reads  the  service  for  the  dead,  we  feel 
the  triteness  of  the  phrases  and  listen  with  a  casual 
ear;  but  the  idea  of  Resurrection  takes  entire  pos 
session  of  our  thoughts,  to  which  the  preacher's 
words  are  but  a  droning  accompaniment. 

SUNDOWN. 

When  my  sun  of  life  is  low, 
f    When  the  dewy  shadows  creep. 
Say  for  me  before  I  go, 

41  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep." 

I  am*  at  the  journey's  end, 

I  have  sown  and  I  must  reap; 
There  are  no  more  ways  to  mend — 

Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep. 

Nothing  more  to  doubt  or  dare, 

Nothing  more  to  give  or  keep ; 
Say  for  me  the  children's  prayer, 

"  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep." 

Who  has  learned  along  the  way — 
I    Primrose  path  or  stony  steep — 
More  of  wisdom  than  to  say, 
"  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep  "? 

What  have  you  more  wise  to  tell 

When  the  shadows  round  me  creep?  .  .  . 
All  Is  over,  all  is  well  ...  , 

,  Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep. 

[The  Last  Line  of  All.] 

You  know  the  infallible  sign  of  spring:  father 
on  the  back  porch,  cleaning  last  fall's  mud  from 
his  golf  shoes.  B.  L.  T. 


IN  MEMORY 

OF 

BERT  LESTON  TAYLOR 

(B.  L.  T.) 


PROGRAM  AND  RECORDS  OF 

A  PUBLIC  MEETING  HELD  IN 

THE  BLACKSTONE  THEATRE 

MARCH  27     1921 


CHICAGO 

WALTER  M.   HILL 

1922 


COPYRIGHT,  1921 

BY 
THE  CLIFF  DWELLERS 


THE  TORCH    PRESS 

CEDAR    RAPIDS 

IOWA 


A, 
Helton  SDaplor 

HUMORIST    :     SATIRIST    :    JOURNALIST 

PARAGRAPHER     :     POET 
MAN  OF  LETTERS  AND  OF  LAUGHTER 


EDITOR  FOR  FOURTEEN  YEARS 

.    OF  THE 

"LINE  O'  TYPE  OR  TWO"  COLUMN 

IN 

THE  CHICAGO  TRIBUNE 


AUTHOR  OF 

THE  WELL  IN  THE  WOOD 
THE  CHARLATANS 
A  LINE  O'  VERSE  O^  TWO 
THE  PIPE-SMOKE  CARRY 
MOTLEY  MEASURES 


13,  1866  jfWarcfj  19,  1921 


469900 


MEETING  IN  MEMOEY 

OF 

BEET  LESTON  TAYLOE 


THE  BLACKSTONE  THEATRE,  CHICAGO,  MARCH  27,  1921 


Under  the  auspices  of 
The  Cliff  Dwellers  and  The  Chicago  Tribune 

KARLETON  HACKETT,  PRESIDING 


C  MINOE  QUARTET,  romanza  and  allegretto BRAHMS 

THE  FLONZALEY  QUARTET 

B.  L.  T. :  THE  MAN KARLETON  HACKETT 

VERSES  TO  B.  L.  T FRANKLIN  P.  ADAMS 

Reading  by  DONALD  ROBERTSON 

B.  L.  T.  IN  JOURNALISM JOSEPH  MEDILL  PATTERSON 

B.  L.  T.  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS.  .HENRY  KITCHELL  WEBSTER 

B.  L.  T.'S  WORK  AND  GENIUS HORACE  J.  BRIDGES 

POEMS  BY  B.  L.  T DONALD  ROBERTSON 

The  Road  to  Anywhere.     Canopus. 
Battle  Song.     Invocation. 

COMMITTEE  ON  MEMORIAL  ARRANGEMENTS:  Henry  Kitchell 
Webster,  Guy  Hardy,  Charles  Collins,  Arthur  Bissell, 
Ashton  Stevens,  Karleton  Hackett,  Payson  S.  Wild,  Karl 
Edwin  Harriman,  Tiffany  Blake,  Clifford  S.  Raymond. 

USHERS  :  Arthur  Bissell,  Murry  Nelson,  Andrew  N.  Rebori, 
Henri  C.  E.  David,  Thomas  E.  Tallmadge,  Allen  Spencer, 
Wallace  Rice,  Frederick  J.  Wessels,  Payson  S.  Wild, 
R.  R.  Jarvie,  L.  C.  Woodworth. 


B.  L.  T.:  THE  MAN 
By  KARLETON  HACKETT 

When  the  Flonzaley  Quartet  gave  their  last 
concert  in  this  theatre  a  few  weeks  ago  they 
played  Brahms '  C  Minor  Quartet,  which  con 
tains  the  romanza  and  allegretto  to  which  we 
have  just  listened ;  and  Bert  Taylor  was  in 
his  seat,  as  he  always  was  for  the  concerts 
of  the  Flonzaley  Quartet,  bathing  his  soul  in 
the  ineffable  beauty  of  the  music,  even  as 
have  we  today. 

Music  was  to  him  an  essential  element.  He 
lived  under  an  intense  nervous  strain,  his 
whole  heart  bound  up  in  the  "Line"  which 
was  never  absent  from  his  thoughts  day  or 
night;  and  as  he  gave  of  himself  without 
stint  so  he  constantly  had  recourse  to  the  re 
storative  powers  of  music  as  necessary  to  his 
well-being. 

He  was  a  tonic.  When  he  drew  his  chair 
up  to  the  luncheon  table  you  could  feel  a 
bracing  of  the  fibres  all  about,  our  slack 
speech  drew  taut,  the  man  with  the  platitude 

7 


on  the  tip  of  his  tongue  swallowed  hard  and 
gazed  out  of  the  window,  and  there  was  talk, 
a  play  of  wit  upon  wit ;  at  times  there  was  a 
flash;  out  came  Bert's  little  book;  he  would 
make  a  pencil  jotting;  and  we  knew  that 
some  one  had  "made  the  line." 

His  mind  was  as  alembic  in  which  banal 
ities,  " flubdub,"  dissolved,  and  yet  so  sim 
ply,  so  inevitably,  that  there  was  no  sediment 
of  bitterness  left  behind,  but  what  there  was 
of  truth  or  of  wit  came  forth  purged  to  be 
capped  by  him  with  an  all-illuminating  head. 

He  loved  words,  but  not  as  a  purist,  for 
cant  as  to  words  was  as  foreign  to  his  nature 
as  cant  in  any  other  form ;  but  the  melody  of 
the  beautiful  line,  the  vigor  of  accurate  ex 
pression,  the  apt  usage,  the  happy  turn  of  a 
phrase  and  even  the  mere  sound  of  the  word. 

For  years  he  was  fascinated  with  the  name 
Saskatchewan.  He  used  to  speak  it  aloud 
that  others  might  sense  its  charm.  He  knew 
the  region  well,  and  planned  many  long  trips 
there  since  he  was  convinced  that  any  land 
which  had  gained  for  itself  such  a  name  must 
be  of  wondrous  charm. 

His  eyes  were  ever  turning  towards  the 
north,  to  the  cool  silences  of  the  woods,  for 
there  was  in  his  nature  a  something  shy, 

8 


aloof,  that  found  itself  most  at  home  out  in 
the  open,  under  the  great  pines. 

It  was  the  forest  primeval  that  he  loved-, 
to  wrestle  with  it  in  all  its  moods,  with  pack 
on  back  twenty-five  miles  a  day  along  the 
Indian  trails,  over  the  lakes,  across  the 
carries,  down  the  streams,  and  then  at  night 
bed  himself  on  balsam  boughs  and  breathe 
in  their  balm. 

There  his  spirit  expanded  and  he  opened 
his  heart,  revealing  the  man  within,  as  was 
not  possible  for  him  amid  bricks  and  mortar. 
Thence  he  returned,  revived  and  invigorated 
to  grapple  with  the  great  riddle,  and  in  his 
fight  for  right  to  enshrine  himself  in  our 
hearts. 

Something  that  was  Bert  Taylor  has  be 
come  a  part  of  the  best  that  there  is  in  all 
of  us. 


VERSES  TO  B.  L.  T. 

Friend,  through  a  blurring  mist  of  tears 
That  with  the  days  but  faster  flow, 
Contribute  I,  as  twenty  years 
Ago; 

When  with  your  gentle  hand  you  showed 
A  faltering,  but  adoring  youth 
The  road — the  straight  and  shining  road 
Of  Truth. 

With  you  ahead  as  loving  guide 

To  light  the  road  for  me,  you  know — 

And  only  you — how  I  have  tried 

Togo. 

Dark  now  the  way ;  the  road  unfair, 
Where  now  the  guide  from  whom  to  learn 
The  Path? . . .  O  Friend,  I  don't  know  where 
To  turn! 

And  yet  you  left  the  path  so  true 
That  not  the  blindest  cannot  trace 
His  kinship  to  the  so-called  hu- 
Man  race. 

10 


Sweet  friend,  to  whom  I  have  revealed 
The  heart  within  me  through  the  years, 
You  know  how  poorly  I've  concealed 
My  tears. 

Light  is  my  threnody  and  crude ; 
I  might  have  made  it  heavier,  were  it 
Not  that  I  knew  this  is  how  you'd 
Prefer  it. 

FRANKLIN  P.  ADAMS 


11 


B.  L.  T.  IN  JOURNALISM 

By  JOSEPH  MEDILL  PATTERSON 

I  was  asked  to  speak  briefly  on  B.  L.  T.  as  a 
newspaper  man.  There  are  a  number  of  his 
other  co-workers  who  are  better  fitted  to 
speak  on  this  subject  than  I  am  because  they 
knew  him  more  intimately  than  I  did.  In 
other  words,  there  were  the  "  gentlemen  at 
the  adjacent  desks "  to  whom  he  talked  so 
often — people  who  were  with  him  more  than 
I  was,  any  one  of  whom  could  have  been 
chosen  for  this,  and  who  would  be  better 
qualified  to  do  it  than  I. 

The  manager  of  a  newspaper  is  something 
like  a  trouble  squad — that  is,  his  attention 
goes  to  the  place  where  inefficiency,  failure 
and  trouble  are  found.  Where  everything 
is  going  all  right,  that  is  one  of  the  places  he 
never  visits.  He  spends  much  of  his  time  in 
departments  where  things  are  not  going  as 
they  should,  and  that  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  I  did  not  know  Mr.  Taylor  better — sim- 

12 


ply  because  there  was  never  any  trouble  in 
his  department. 

Some  geniuses,  newspaper  geniuses  as 
w^ell  as  others,  are  temperamental.  They 
are  frequently  disturbed,  perhaps  by  a  hap 
pening  in  a  distant  city,  and  they  call  up 
to  say  that  they  cannot  report  for  work  on 
this  day  or  that.  That  was  not  true  of  Mr. 
Taylor.  The  possibility  that  his  column 
would  not  be  prepared  never  entered  into 
our  calculations. 

I  do  not  recall  the  contracts  that  were 
made  with  him  from  time  to  time.  I  don't 
remember,  but  I  don 't  think  it  was  stipulated 
that  he  should  have  absolute  independence 
of  expression,  but  whether  it  was  stipulated 
or  not,  he  did  have  it.  He  took  it,  and  what 
ever  effort  was  made  to  restrain  him  was 
made  at  the  beginning  of  our  association,  so 
that  he  was,  you  might  say,  a  newspaper 
within  a  newspaper.  He  had  the  swing  of 
the  space,  and  he  filled  it  as  he  wanted.  We 
have  to  judge  of  his  efficiency  from  that. 
His  column  was  one  column  long,  and  it  was 
supposed  to  be  written  up  to  standard  every 
day,  and  it  was  so  written  every  day. 

I  have  spoken  of  making  contracts  with 
him.  I  am  talking  about  those  things  of 

13 


which  I  happen  to  know  something.  I 
wasn't  an  intimate  friend  of  his.  He  knew 
he  was  good ;  that  his  value  was  high ;  and  he 
placed  a  high  value  on  his  services.  He  was 
the  most  businesslike  person  to  deal  with  I 
have  ever  known.  I  mean  to  say  this,  that 
if  he  had  gone  into  the  business  of  buying  or 
selling  any  commodity,  I  feel  sure  that  he 
would  have  been  very  successful,  for  his 
mind  was  accurate  and  quick. 

And  his  word:  As  has  often  been  said, 
his  word  was  as  good  as  his  bond.  In  his 
case  it  was  better  than  anybody's  bond  could 
be.  If  a  question  like  a  contract  came  up  you 
would  talk  with  him  for  three  minutes;  he 
would  tell  you  what  his  terms  would  be ;  and 
he  would  say,  "I  will  take  it"  or  " I  will  not 
take  it. ' '  That  is  all  there  was  to  it,  and  you 
might  wait  for  three  months  until  the  thing 
wras  written  up. 

I  am  not  talking  about  the  way  he  wrote 
because  you  who  read  it  know  as  much  as  I 
do  about  it.  All  I  knew  about  what  he  wrote 
was  when  it  was  in  print.  I  never  read  it 
before  that. 

These  are  some  of  the  experiences  I  had 
with  him,  and  such  as  I  can  tell  you.  As  a 
newspaper  man  he  was  peculiarly  expert  be- 

14 


cause  he  was  a  printer  as  well  as  a  writer. 
His  early  life  was  spent  on  several  small 
town  newspapers,  where  he  learned  to  set 
type,  and  thus  he  learned  the  typographical 
effect  of  certain  printing,  and  was  aware  of 
its  value.  He  knew  when  to  put  something 
in  italics,  and  he  knew  when  to  use  the 
smaller  or  the  larger  type.  There  is  a  real 
art  about  it,  and  he  knew  how  to  bring  out 
the  more  pungent  paragraphs,  surrounding 
them  with  two  sets  of  different  type  to  give 
the  different  meanings,  and  he  did  this. 

He  was  an  informed  spirit,  and  he  was  a 
leader.  I  will  say  this  in  closing :  I  think 
at  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  the  greatest 
newspaper  man  in  America.  I  think  that 
is  what  he  was — the  best  all-round  journalist 
we  had  in  this  country  at  the  time  he  died. 


15 


B.  L.  T.  AS  MAN  OF  LETTERS 
By  HENRY  KITCHELL  WEBSTER 

Bert  Leston  Taylor  was,  among  men  of 
letters  the  first,  I  think,  of  a  new  species. 
He  was  not,  though  he  wrrote  many  essays,  an 
essayist.  He  was  not,  primarily,  a  poet, 
although  his  two  volumes  of  verse,  if  there 
were  nothing  else,  would  entitle  him  to  rank 
as  one,  and  a  good  one.  He  was  a  columnist. 
And  the  column  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  new  art 
form,  holding  no  lineal  relation  to  the  pro 
ducts  of  the  epigrammatists  and  occasional 
versifiers  of  times  past.  For  the  column  as 
Taylor  achieved  it  was  no  arithmetical  sum 
of  its  component  parts.  It  was  an  organized 
thing.  It  had  form  much  as  the  sonata  has 
form,  and  like  the  sonata  form  it  was  capable 
in  his  skilful  hands  of  almost  infinite  varia 
tion.  This  was,  perhaps,  why  time  could  not 
wither  it,  nor  custom  stale. 

I  doubt  very  much  whether  the  amazing 
technical  skill  and  the  loving  labor  which  he 
so  lavishly  devoted  to  it  are  generally 

16 


appreciated.  And,  indeed,  it  is  a  compli 
ment  to  his  art  that  they  should  not  be.  We 
took  it  year  after  year  as  a  sort  of  natural 
phenomenon,  as  a  blessed  thing  that  was 
somehow  always  there,  fair  weather  or  foul, 
to  begin  the  day  with — a  pinch  of  Attic  salt 
from  an  inexhaustible  supply  to  flavor  the 
varying  moods  in  which  we  came  to  the 
breakfast  table.  We  are  bewildered  now 
that  it  is  gone.  It  is  as  if  the  spring  were 
not  come  back  this  year. 

This  is  not  the  time  to  attempt  a  technical 
analysis  of  the  column,  but  it  may  be  noted 
that  one  of  the  elements  of  it  was  its  mere 
appeal  to  the  eye.  B.  L.  T.  was  an  expert 
typographer  and  the  column  was,  in  the 
technical  sense  of  the  word,  composed  with 
the  utmost  concern. 

His  uncanny  genius  for  writing  captions 
to  the  work  of  his  contribs  has  been,  of 
course,  our  wonder  and  our  despair.  But 
there  is  a  mystery  about  the  column  deeper 
than  this,  and  perhaps  less  widely  noted. 
Every  column,  whether  it  contained  of  his 
actual  writing  only  the  three  per  cent  he 
sometimes  playfully  avowed  or  a  great  deal 
more,  became,  by  some  miracle  of  transub- 
stantiation,  himself.  It  had  many  brilliant 

17 


contributors  whose  initials  or  pen-names  we 
learned  to  look  for — Pan,  Pontif ex,  P.  D.  S., 
Riquarius — but  the  column,  the  whole  col 
umn,  from  its  ornamental  heading  to  its 
justly  celebrated  last  line,  was  B.  L.  T.  The 
grain  and  texture  of  his  mind  and  spirit  im 
penetrated  every  line  of  it.  It  figured  forth 
with  such  perfection  of  line  and  color,  high 
light  and  shadow,  the  personality  of  the  man 
who  created  it,  that  the  half  million  of  his 
readers  who  never  saw  him  nor  heard  him 
speak  knew  him  almost  as  well  as  the  hand 
ful  of  cronies  who  sat  at  table  with  him  three 
or  four  times  every  week. 

I  am  finding  it  hard  to  confine  myself  to 
my  subject,  Taylor  as  a  man  of  letters,  for 
his  art  was  not,  to  him,  an  old  coat  which  he 
put  on  when  he  sat  down  at  his  desk.  It  was 
to  an  extraordinary  degree,  the  man  himself. 

The  beginning  of  his  art  was  a  fastidious 
sensitiveness  to  words.  They  lived  for  him ; 
they  were  as  individual  as  his  friends.  He 
loved  the  bold  outspoken  clean-edged  ones, 
words  which  could  be  precise  without  being 
pretentious.  He  was  no  snob  about  them. 
Many  an  impudent  new-hatched  gamin  of  a 
word  that  came  grinning  to  him  from  the 
streets,  the  shops,  the  bleachers  or  the  links, 

18 


he  welcomed  with  whole-hearted  joy  and  in 
troduced  among  the  grandees  of  his  vocabu 
lary.  But  mincing  words,  affected  words, 
bastards  of  pedantry  and  ignorance,  were  his 
predestined  prey.  He  marked  them  down 
and  transfixed  them  with  the  golden  shafts 
of  his  wit,  as  Phoebus  Apollo  transfixed,  one 
by  one,  with  his  golden  shafts,  the  sons  of 
Poseidon.  I  will  not  say  he  hated  them.  I 
cannot  remember  that  B.  L.  T.  ever  hated 
anything.  Why  should  he  hate  that  at  which 
he  could  always  laugh?  But  I  think  the 
Line  might  almost  have  gone  Republican 
along  with  the  rest  of  his  newspaper  had  the 
candidate  restrained  his  tongue  from  that 
abortive  monster,  normalcy. 

He  was  a  connoisseur  of  life.  He  savored 
its  humors  delicately,  thoughtfully.  He  en 
joyed  a  sense  of  adventure  and  discovery. 
The  side  of  a  question  which  everybody  took, 
the  phrase  that  everybody  used,  the  play 
that  had  run  fifty  weeks  and  the  novel  that 
had  sold  a  hundred  thousand  copies  were  all 
suspect — a  little — with  him.  They  must 
show  cause,  sustain  the  burden  of  proof. 

Yet  he  was  as  little  precious  as  he  was  vul 
gar — and  vulgarity  would  have  been  im 
possible  to  him.  He  had  a  robust  sense  of 

19 


life  and  of  humor.  He  could  laugh  at  any 
thing  that  Rabelais  could  have  laughed  at. 
And  this,  I  think,  is  one  of  the  great  debts 
we  owe  him.  He  taught  us  to  laugh,  again, 
without  shame,  over  many  of  the  rich,  com 
mon,  elemental  jests  which  the  prurient- 
prudish  would  attempt  to  deny  out  of 
existence. 

I  spoke  of  him  as  beginning  a  new  species 
among  men  of  letters.  Yet  his  spirit,  among 
the  shades  of  the  masters  of  his  language, 
will  find  some  boon  companions.  Two,  in 
particular,  I  would  name,  Thomas  Gray  and 
Edward  FitzGerald.  Both  are  catalogued  in 
the  public  mind  as  poets,  yet  of  Gray's  poems 
all  that  live  today  are  the  Elegy  in  the  Coun 
try  Churchyard,  Eton  College,  and  the  Cat 
Drowned  in  a  Bowl  of  Goldfish ;  and  of  Fitz 
Gerald,  outside  his  translations  of  Omar 
Khayyam  and  Calderon,  all  that  remains  is 
the  little  poem  about  the  meadows  in  spring, 
which,  by  internal  evidence  merely,  he  be 
guiled  the  editor  of  the  Athenaeum  into 
believing  to  be  the  work  of  Charles  Lamb. 
Yet  the  position  of  Gray  and  FitzGerald  as 
classic  is  utterly  secure. 

The  explanation  is  that  they  were  two  of 
the  greatest  and  most  inspired  letter- writers 

20 


that  ever  lived.  Both  were  immensely 
learned  men.  Gray  was  the  greatest  scholar 
of  his  age.  Both  enjoyed  the  friendship  of 
the  finest  spirits  of  their  respective  times. 
Both  were  touched  by  the  magic  wand  of 
irony;  restrained  from  putting  their  backs 
into  things,  from  getting  things  done  which 
seemed  but  dubiously  worth  doing.  And 
both  found  self-expression  in  writing  letters 
to  their  friends. 

They  put  into  these  letters  gossip,  criti 
cism,  irresponsible  nonsense — frequently  ri 
bald — bits  of  verse.  Gray  addressed  to  his 
college  at  Cambridge  an  ode  to  ignorance. 
FitzGerald  played  with  a  project  for  com 
piling  a  Gazette  of  Useless  Information. 
And  these  volumes  of  letters,  one  nearly  a 
hundred  years  old  and  the  other  well  into 
its  second  century,  are  as  fresh  to  the  reader 
today  as  if  they  had  come  to  him  in  his 
morning's  mail. 

Well,  in  spirit  B.  L.  T.  was  a  letter-writer, 
too.  He  wrote  a  letter  just  a  colum  long 
every  day.  It  came  as  personally  from  him, 
put  us  as  much  in  possession  of  him,  as  if  he 
had  sent  it  to  each  of  us  in  a  sealed  envelope. 
Whether  the  form  in  which  they  are  written 
will  lend  itself  practicably  to  collection  and 

21 


publication  for  posterity,  I  don't  know.  In 
our  living  memory  the  man  is  imperishable. 
But,  Thomas  Gray  and  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald,  I  felicitate  you  both.  For,  rare 
souls  as  you  are,  there  has  joined  your  com 
pany  a  kindred  spirit. 


22 


B.  L.  T.'S  WORK  AND  GENIUS 
By  HORACE  J.  BRIDGES 

One  is  often  tempted  to  suspect  that  the  be 
setting  sin  natural  to  a  large  and  youthful 
community  is  the  error  often  of  counf ound- 
ing  bigness  with  greatness.  Certainly  in 
this  hustling  American  life  of  ours  we  find 
that  grave  error  often  committed,  and  it  is 
necessary  at  times  for  us  to  pause  and  re 
mind  ourselves  of  the  fact  that  the  commun 
ity  which  mistakes  largeness  for  greatness 
will  never  become  great. 

If  we  want  to  know  what  this  Chicago  of 
ours  really  is  and  is  capable  of  becoming,  we 
should  resolutely  close  our  ears  to  the  brag 
garts;  to  those  who  urge  us  to  " boost"  our 
community  by  swaggering  about  numbers 
and  valuations.  Never  mind  the  money  and 
the  statistics.  Forget  them,  and  forget  the 
growth  of  population,  and  look  for  the 
material  of  a  true  judgment  about  Chicago 
to  its  artists,  its  men  of  letters,  its  poets, 

23 


thinkers,  creative  minds  and  reformers;  to 
those  who  are  self-sacrificingly  working  for 
the  good  of  others  and  the  betterment  of 
posterity;  for  it  is  by  such  men  and  their 
work  that  posterity  will  judge  of  Chicago. 

This  is  a  large  city.  We  are  told  it  often, 
far  too  often.  It  is  vastly  larger  than,  say 
the  Athens  of  Pericles.  And  yet,  when  one 
compares  the  Athens  of  Pericles  with  the 
Chicago  of  today  and  its  present  political 
leaders,  one  feels  that  perhaps  the  com 
parison  might  prove  less  favorable  to 
Chicago  if  it  were  drawn  with  regard  to 
other  matters  than  mere  size  and  numbers. 
The  question  of  questions — the  question  by 
which  the  future  is  going  to  judge  us — is 
whether  we  can  produce  men  less  unworthy 
to  compare  with  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles 
and  Euripides,  with  Socrates  and  Plato,  than 
some  of  our  political  leaders  to  compare  with 
Pericles.  That  will  be  the  test,  mark  you; 
that  and  nothing  else. 

I  venture  to  think  that  when  this  judg 
ment  of  posterity  comes  to  be  rendered  it 
will  run  somewhat  to  the  effect  that  in  our 
first  century,  under  difficulties,  very  great 
and  in  some  cases  insuperable,  we  haven't 
done  so  badly.  And  one  of  the  clearest 

24 


reasons  that  posterity  will  have  for  deliver 
ing  (if  it  does  deliver)  so  favorable  a  judg 
ment  will  be  the  personality  and  the  achieve 
ment  of  the  man  whose  completed  life  and 
work  we  are  celebrating  here  today. 

Note,  if  you  please,  that  word  completed. 
One  of  the  mistakes  we  make  about  the  thing 
we  call  death,  and  one  of  the  reasons  why  we 
fall  into  an  exaggerated  grieving  over  it,  is 
our  habit  of  using  the  word  "end,"  instead 
of  the  word  "completion."  We  think  of 
something  chopped  off,  catastrophically  in 
terrupted  and  maimed,  instead  of  something 
rounded  off  to  a  fitting  close. 

When  you  remember  that  life  is  great  in 
terms  only  of  quality,  valuable  only  for  its 
intrinsic  excellence,  you  then  realize  that  any 
worthy  life — any  life  that  has  achieved  this 
quality  of  inner,  essential  worth — is  com 
plete  at  any  moment,  and  does  not  depend  for 
its  fulfillment  on  duration.  So  that  when  I 
share,  as  I  do,  not  only  the  general  grief  of 
this  community,  the  grief  of  those  who  have 
lost  a  valued  writer,  thinker  and  humorist, 
but  that  more  poignant  grief  of  those  who 
have  lost  a  personal  friend,  a  comrade  they 
had  learned  to  love,  my  mood  is  controlled 
by  the  thought  of  the  completion  of  a  fine 

25 


life.  It  is  a  mood  not  wholly  of  sorrow,  but 
tempered  with  a  certain  restrained  triumph. 

Taylor  has  been  spoken  of  here  this  after 
noon  as  a  music-lover,  as  a  newspaper  man, 
and  as  a  man  of  letters.  You  have  heard 
the  judgment  of  those  who  knew  and  could 
competently  estimate  his  rare  distinction  in 
these  departments.  Let  us  now  think  of  him 
for  a  moment  as  a  dispenser  of  sunshine.  One 
woman  in  a  distant  town,  writing  in  on  some 
purely  business  matter,  added  a  post-script 
expressing  her  regret  on  hearing  of  the  news 
of  his  death,  and  asked,  "  What  are  we  going 
to  do  without  our  daily  smile?" 

Our  daily  smile!  That  is  what  Bert 
Taylor's  work  meant  to  people  by  thousands, 
by  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands.  One 
cannot  but  recall  in  connection  with  him  that 
lovely  comment  of  Dr.  Johnson  on  the  death 
of  Garrick.  What  could  be  more  truly 
applied  to  our  friend  Bert  Taylor?  "I  am 
disappointed, "  said  Johnson,  "by  that  stroke 
of  death  which  has  eclipsed  the  gayety  of 
nations  and  impoverished  the  public  stock  of 
harmless  pleasure."  The  gayety,  if  not  of 
nations  at  least  of  states  and  cities  and  wide 
countrysides,  has  been  eclipsed  by  the  pass 
ing  of  our  friend.  Surely,  in  a  world  so 

26 


troubled  as  this  world  of  ours  has  been  these 
last  few  years,  and  is  today,  it  is  a  very 
great  thing  to  have  given  to  countless  thou 
sands  "a  daily  smile."     Throughout  those 
days  when  there  was  little  to  smile  at,  in 
times  when  the  things  we  value  more  than 
life  were  in  jeopardy  in  the  world,  Taylor 
was  able  not  only  to  keep  his  soul  serene 
above  the  tumult,  but  to  impart  an  infectious 
gayety  to  all  of  us,  even  in  the  darkest 
hours.     It   was  the   religious   yearning   of 
George  Eliot  that  she  might- 
Beget  the  smiles  that  have  no  cruelty ; 
Be  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused, 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense. 
So  shall  we  join  the  Choir  Invisible 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world. 

How  literally  Taylor's  work  and  genius 
enabled  him  to  fulfill  this  aspiration!  He 
was,  in  very  fact,  to  hundreds  of  thousands, 
the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused,  and  the 
smiles  that  he  begot  were  always  devoid  of 
cruelty. 

He  had,  as  Mr.  Webster  has  reminded  us, 
in  a  high  and  rare  degree,  the  gift  of  irony. 
He  was  eminent  as  a  satirist.  But  note  that 
he  escaped  what  seems  to  be  the  besetting 

27 


danger  of  the  satirist — that  of  turning  pessi 
mist  and  cynic.  For  examples  of  this  peril 
of  the  satirist  one  needs  look  no  further  than 
to  Swift  and  Mark  Twain.  (Remember  the 
Fourth  Part  of  " Gulliver, "  and  "What  Is 
Man?"  and  "The  Mysterious  Stranger.") 
Taylor's  humor  was  as  considerate  at  the  end 
as  at  the  beginning,  his  satire  as  kindly,  his 
last  smile  as  humane  as  his  first.  He  was 
like  Elia.  What  higher  praise  could  be  given 
him  than  to  say  that  he  has  written  pages 
worthy  of  rank  with  Elia's?  Yet  this  we 
can  justly  give. 

To  laugh  with  men  rather  than  at  them ; 
to  set  them  laughing  at  -themselves ;  never  to 
raise  a  laugh  against  innocence,  against  hon 
est  simplicity,  against  any  worthy  quality ;  to 
sting  nothing  but  vice,  humbug,  false  pre 
tenses,  arrogant  ignorance,  snobbery  or  pre 
tentious  philistinism — this  was  his  rule  of 
life.  To  live  up  to  such  a  rule,  to  the  extent 
he  did,  through  long  years  of  incessant  work, 
was  great  grace. 

Mr.  Patterson  has  told  us  this  afternoon 
of  the  fact  that  in  the  early  day — that  is, 
when  they  did  not  know  him — the  authorities 
of  the  Tribune  made  some  tentative  efforts 
to  restrain  his  independence  of  utterance.  I 

28 


am  glad  to  hear  that  these  efforts  were  made. 
I  did  not  know  that  any  body  had  ever  been 
rash  enough  to  attempt  anything  of  the  kind. 
The  utter  and  hopeless  failure  of  these 
efforts,  which  Mr.  Patterson  admits,  will 
prove  to  the  world  what  never  needed  prov 
ing  to  Taylor's  friends — that  there  was  in 
him  a  certain  high  quality  that  nowadays  is 
all  too  rare.  I  mean  that  absolute,  un 
qualified,  unpurchasable  self-respect  and  in 
dependence  that  made  him  care  less  for  any 
thing  in  the  world  than  he  cared  for  the  in 
tegrity  of  his  own  mind  and  conscience. 
That,  friends,  is  why  he  was  a  great  news 
paper  man.  He  did  not  exemplify  that 
strange  coincidence,  so  frequently  to  be 
observed,  by  which  the  opinions  of  journalists 
are  found  to  agree  with  those  of  the  persons 
who  employ  them.  We  all  valued  him,  first 
and  foremost,  because  we  knew  that  the 
opinions  he  expressed  were  his  own.  What 
that  meant  to  some  of  us  during  the  early 
years  of  the  war,  I  can  hardly  trust  myself 
to  say.  Taylor  was  one  of  those  who  from 
the  beginning  could  see  what  was  at  stake  in 
the  conflict.  In  a  community  where  it  wasn't 
always  easy  to  express  one's  self  freely  on 
that  subject,  and  under  circumstances  where 

29 


it  must  sometimes  have  been  particularly 
difficult,  he  always  did  it.  He  always  said 
what  he  believed,  and  let  others  say  freely 
what  they  believed. 

His  standards  were  high  ones.  Only  the 
best  in  literature,  poetry,  music  and  thought 
appealed  to  him.  He  had  those  two  great 
qualifications  that  are  the  conditions  of 
citizenship  in  the  republic  of  letters — 
catholicity  combined  with  discrimination; 
the  capacity  to  value  a  writer  for  what  he 
was  and  could  do,  and  a  discrimination  that 
prevented  him  from  falling  into  the  idolatry 
of  sham  taste,  and  crediting  men  with  being 
what  they  were  not,  and  doing  what  they 
could  not.  He  had  the  inevitable  exclusive- 
ness  of  all  trained  taste,  yet  without  snob 
bery.  He  could  laugh  and  enjoy  with  the 
" high-brow,"  yet  he  could  laugh  and  enjoy 
with  the  "low-brow"  without  condescension. 

You  have,  of  course,  noticed  in  his  column 
occasional  references,  overt  or  faintly  veiled, 
to  his  children.  In  these  he  displayed  a  deli 
cate,  yearning  tenderness,  affectionate  with 
out  sentimentality,  showing  its  depth  by  its 
very  restraint.  I  take  the  liberty  of  referr 
ing  to  this  matter  because  he  did  thus  put 
himself  on  record,  and  also  because  in  these 

30 


personal  utterances,  these  more  intimate 
notes  in  what  Mr.  Webster  has  called  his 
daily  letter,  he  disclosed  the  spirit  which  in 
formed  his  attitude  to  the  whole  of  the  "  so- 
called  human  race. ' '  It  was  a  spirit  of  kindly 
regard  even  for  people  who  were  absurd.  He 
recognized  that  there  was  somewhat  worth 
while  in  those  he  criticized.  This  is  why 
even  the  victims  of  his  shafts  could  and  did 
enjoy  and  praise  his  work. 

And  as  to  his  humor,  who  shall  attempt  to 
characterize  it?  And  who  can  rival  it? 
Who  is  now  going  to  read  for  us  the  "  signs 
of  the  times ' '  ?  Who  now  will  put  our  small 
towns  on  the  map,  and  civilize  them  with 
laughter,  as  he  did  ?  Who  will  develop  our 
humor  and  our  urbanity  by  making  us  alert 
to  detect  and  to  avoid  the  absurdities  into 
which  we  are  prone  to  fall  ? 

There  is  no  greater  need  in  any  com 
munity — and  especially  in  a  young  and 
heterogeneous  community  like  ours — than 
the  need  for  an  unofficial  but  acceptable  cen 
sor  of  manners  and  mannerism.  Socrates 
was  called  the  gadfly  of  Athens  because  he 
made  people  recognize  their  ignorance,  their 
pretentiousness,  the  absurdity  of  their  "  false 
conceit  of  wisdom. ' '  Taylor  was  a  gadfly  in 

31 


that  sense.  His  sting  was  as  painless  as  it 
was  pointed.  He  not  only  set  a  standard,  he 
was  a  living  standard,  to  which  we  had  to  live 
up,  below  which  we  dared  not  fall. 

In  the  middle  ages  there  flourished  that 
important  functionary,  the  Court  Jester. 
Now  the  Court  Jester — when  he  was  worthy 
of  the  job — was  there  to  protect  the  King 
from  his  worst  enemies,  his  flatterers.  To 
day  Demos  is  King,  a  many-headed  sover 
eign  of  uncertain  mood  and  wavering  intelli 
gence,  surrounded,  assailed,  and  led  astray 
by  a  sickening  swarm  of  flatterers.  Those 
flatterers  never  received  any  mercy  from 
Taylor.  He  was  an  effective  antidote  to  the 
subtlest  and  most  dangerous  vice  that  afflicts 
our  system. 

We  have  learned  much  in  this  nation — and 
especially  in  that  part  of  the  country  from 
which  Taylor  came — of  the  power  of  the 
preacher.  But  today  the  press,  for  good  or 
ill,  has  a  more  far-reaching  and  potent  in 
fluence  than  any  preacher  can  hope  to  have. 
Yet  the  journalist  too  is  a  preacher,  and 
preaching  is  preaching  even  if  it  is  done  in 
cap  and  bells.  So  done,  it  is  often  more 
effective  than  preaching  in  stole  and  surplice. 
No  preacher  can  hope  for  so  wide  a  congre- 

32 


gation  as  Taylor  had,  and  few  can  hope  to 
attain,  on  the  whole,  higher  standards. 

Taylor's  thoroughness  was  one  of  the 
secrets  of  his  great  success.  I  recall  a  re 
mark  of  his  which  when  he  made  it,  I 
absurdly  misunderstood.  Some  three  years 
ago  he  said  in  his  column  something  to  the 
effect  that  the  third  stanza  of  Keats'  "Grec 
ian  Urn"  ode  would  have  been  much  better  if 
Keats  had  worked  longer  over  it.  I  thought 
he  was  joking,  and  that  he  was  inviting  his 
contributors  to  try  their  hand  at  parodies  of 
the  stanza  in  question.  Under  this  impres 
sion  I  perpetrated  a  parody  of  it,  which  he 
printed.  But  in  a  subsequent  conversation 
he  told  me  that  his  remark  was  serious.  It 
is  a  fact  that  the  third  stanza  is  very  inferior 
to  the  rest  of  that  bewilderingly  beautiful 
poem.  This  criticism  I  quote  for  the  light  it 
throws  on  Taylor.  His  work  seldom  be 
trayed  the  lack  of  that  extra  twenty  minutes' 
concentration  which  so  often  creates  the 
greatest  of  all  differences, — the  difference 
between  the  good  and  the  excellent. 

What  a  following  he  had!  How  multi 
tudinous  were  his  admirers!  One  of  the 
most  charming  evidences  of  this  was  told  me 
by  a  friend  who  was  present  at  his  funeral 

33 


the  other  day.  There  he  met  a  man  who  said 
he  was  a  plasterer  by  trade,  that  he  had  three 
times  "made  the  Line,'7  and  he  had  taken  a 
day  off  and  lost  a  day's  wages  to  come  to 
Taylor's  funeral.  I  hope  that  man  is  here 
this  afternoon.  I  should  like  to  meet  him. 

Mr.  Hackett,  in  language  as  felicitous  as 
his  thought,  has  told  us  that  something  that 
was  Bert  Taylor  has  become  a  part  of  the 
best  in  us.  I  believe  this.  I  believe  that 
Mr.  Hackett  did  not  use  a  mere  figure  of 
speech,  but  spoke  what  is  actually  true. 

That  the  essential  life  in  a  man  is  im 
mortal  and  indestructible  is  evidenced  by 
this,  that  his  spirit  goes  on  bearing  fruit  and 
producing  effects  in  and  through  the  spirits 
of  those  in  whom  it  has  quickened  some  de 
gree  of  a  life  like  to  its  own.  It  is  not  so 
much  what  one  does,  but  what  one  is  (where 
of  one's  achievements  are  but  the  revealing 
evidence)  which  gleams  through  the  flesh 
and  through  the  conquered  circumstances  of 
one's  life. 

Taylor  was  a  many-sided  man:  citizen, 
husband,  father,  thinker,  poet,  humorist, 
nature-lover.  And  now  the  nature-lover  is 
"made  one  with  nature."  "He  is  a  pre 
sence  to  be  felt  and  known,  in  darkness  and 

34 


in  light,  from  herb  and  stone. "  Thus  living 
"in  lives  made  better  by  his  presence" — not 
only  in  individual  lives,  but  in  the  collective 
life  of  his  city — "he  is  not  dead ;  he  doth  not 
sleep ;  he  has  awakened  from  the  dream  of 
life." 


35 


THE  ROAD  TO  ANYWHERE 

Across  the  places  deep  and  dim, 
And  places  brown  and  bare, 

It  reaches  to  the  planet's  rim — 
The  Road  to  Anywhere. 

Now  east  is  east,  and  west  is  west, 

But  north  lies  in  between, 
And  he  is  blest  whose  feet  have  prest 

The  road  that's  cool  and  green. 

The  road  of  roads  for  them  that  dare 

The  lightest  whim  obey, 
To  follow  where  the  moose  or  bear 

Has  brushed  his  headlong  way. 

The  secrets  that  these  tangles  house 

Are  step  by  step  revealed, 
While  to  the  sun  the  grass  and  boughs 

A  store  of  odors  yield. 

More  sweet  these  odors  in  the  sun 
Than  swim  in  chemist's  jars ; 

And  when  the  fragrant  day  is  done, 
Night — and  a  shoal  of  stars. 
36 


Oh,  east  is  east,  and  west  is  west, 
But  north  lies  full  and  fair; 

And  blest  is  he  who  follows  free 
The  Koad  to  Anywhere. 

B.  L.  T. 


37 


CANOPUS 

When   quacks   with    pills   political   would 
dope  us, 

When  politics  absorbs  the  livelong  day, 
I  like  to  think  about  the  star  Canopus, 

So  far,  so  far  away. 

Greatest  of  visioned   suns,   they  say  who 

list  ?em; 

To  weigh  it  science  always  must  despair. 
Its  shell  would  hold  our  whole  dinged  solar 

system, 
Nor  ever  know  'twas  there. 

When  temporary  chairmen  utter  speeches, 
And  frenzied  henchmen  howl  their  battle 

hymns, 
My  thoughts  float  out  across  the   cosmic 

reaches 
To  where  Canopus  swims. 

When  men  are  calling  names  and  making 

faces, 
And  all  the  world's  a  jangle  and  ajar, 


I  meditate  on  interstellar  spaces 
And  smoke  a  mild  seegar. 

For  after  one  has  had  about  a  week  of 
The  arguments  of  friends  as  well  as  foes, 

A  star  that  has  no  parallax  to  speak  of 
Conduces  to  repose. 

B.  L.  T. 


39 


BATTLE  SONG 

We  stand  at  Armageddon,  and  we  battle  for 

the  Lord, 
And  all  we  ask  to  stead  us  is  a  blessing  on 

each  sword; 
And  tribes  and  factions  mingle  in  one  great 

fighting  clan 
Who  issue  forth  to  battle  behind  a  fighting 

man. 

We  stand  at  Armageddon,  where  men  have 

stood  before, 
And  whatso  be  the  cost  of  it  our  voice  is  still 

for  war. 
Now  let  the  traitor  truckle,  the  falterer  go 

fawn, 
We  only  ask  to  follow  where  the  battle  line 

is  drawn. 

We  stand  at  Armageddon,  where  fighting 

men  have  stood, 
And  creeds  and  races  mingle  in  one  great 

brotherhood ; 

40 


And  here  from  dawn  to  darkness  we  battle 
for  the  Lord  ;— 

Thy  blessing,  great  Jehovah,  on  each  im 
patient  sword! 

B.  L.  T. 


41 


INVOCATION 

O  Comic  Spirit,  hovering  overhead, 

With  sage's  brows  and  finely-tempered  smile, 

Prom  whose   bowed  lips   a   silvery   laugh 

is  sped 
At  pedantry,  stupidity,  and  guile,— 

So  visioned  by  that  sage  on  whom  you  bent 
Always  a  look  of  perfect  sympathy, 
Whose  laugh,  like  yours,  was  never  idly 

spent,— 
Look,  Spirit,  sometimes  f ellowly  on  me ! 

Instruct  and  guide  me  in  the  gentle  art 
Of  thoughtful  laughter — once  satyric  noise ; 
Vouchsafe  to  me,  I  humbly  ask,  some  part, 
However  little,  of  your  perfect  poise. 

Keep  me  from  bitterness,   contempt,   and 

scorn, 

From  anger,  pride,  impatience,  and  disdain. 
When  I  am  self -deceived  your  smile  shall 

warn, 

Your  volleyed  laughter  set  me  right  again. 

42 


Am  I  inspired  to  mirth  or  mockery, 
Grant,  Spirit,  that  it  be  not  overdrawn ; 
And  am  I  moved  to  malice,  let  it  be 
Only  "the  sunny  malice  of  a  faun." 

B.  L.  T. 


43 


The  G*-iff 
Qhioago. 


G63 


469900 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


